Saturday, June 29, 2013

On June 15, 2013, Kansans gathered to deliver a message to Secretary of State Kirs Kobach to ask that to stop the hate. Kobach "moonlights" as an attorney for the racist FAIR. This slide show has pictures of the peaceful citizens. Kobach's office is in his house,

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Here's a jam on "Right or Wrong"bringing together two generations of western swing and featuring the legendary Johnny Gimble (discography from allmusic.com) with the Hot Club of Cowtown (discography from allmusic.com. I've head some great live performances by the Hot Club of Cowtown at Winfield's Walnut Valley Festival and at other venues, but never anything to equal this.

I always assumed "Right or Wrong" was a Bob Wills or, least, western swing song,but it is actually a pop/jazz ballad from the 1920s. Versions by Wills and others western swingers played only the chorus,

Sometime I would like to write an essay on the subject of the democratic left, Stalinism, and the Spanish Civil War. For now, I'll note that this week is the anniversary of the murder oif Andreu Nin by the Stalinist apparatus. Below is a little about Nin, a couple of POUM posters, and some links.

A former member of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT Andreu Nin later became a founder member of the Spanish Communist Party. While in Russia he became a supporter of the Left Opposition and for a time Trotsky’s secretary. Nin broke with Trotsky in 1935 to form the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity) with Joaquin Maurin of the BOC (Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc). During the Spanish Revolution the POUM had some influence in Catalonia and Nin joined the Generalidad, the Catalan government, as minister for justice, but after threats from the Soviet consul in Barcelona, Antonov-Ovseyenko, Nin was sacked in December 1936. In June 1937 Nin and most of the POUM leadership were “arrested” by Stalinist agents and Nin was executed shortly afterwards. (wikipedia)